Life expectancy of SSDs vs HDs

Apple's release of the Retina MBP, with its standard SSD drive, made me wonder about SSD vs HD life expectancies. I know that SSDs are far more durable than spinning HDs, as far as withstanding physical trauma like bumps and drops. There are no moving parts to wear out or get misaligned. But what about repeated access to the flash drive chips? I've read stuff about "a certain number of reads and writes" before even SSDs begin to fail.

Assuming that SSDs will of course fail, is this "usual" number of read/write life expectancy similar, or hopefully greater than, the average life of a spinning hard drive? I know there are lemon hard drives that fail within a month, and others that last 9 years. I'm just talking about ballpark experience.

Apple's release of the Retina MBP, with its standard SSD drive, made me wonder about SSD vs HD life expectancies. I know that SSDs are far more durable than spinning HDs, as far as withstanding physical trauma like bumps and drops. There are no moving parts to wear out or get misaligned. But what about repeated access to the flash drive chips? I've read stuff about "a certain number of reads and writes" before even SSDs begin to fail.

Assuming that SSDs will of course fail, is this "usual" number of read/write life expectancy similar, or hopefully greater than, the average life of a spinning hard drive? I know there are lemon hard drives that fail within a month, and others that last 9 years. I'm just talking about ballpark experience.

- Too many "beachballs", read this: Beachballs- Computer seems slower than it used to? Read this for some slow computer tips: Speedup- Almost full hard drive? Some solutions. Out of Space- Apple Battery Info. Battery

- Too many "beachballs", read this: Beachballs- Computer seems slower than it used to? Read this for some slow computer tips: Speedup- Almost full hard drive? Some solutions. Out of Space- Apple Battery Info. Battery

I read them and went home and made another bootable clone of my MBP. . . ..

Thanks...hope you had fun!

- Nick

- Too many "beachballs", read this: Beachballs- Computer seems slower than it used to? Read this for some slow computer tips: Speedup- Almost full hard drive? Some solutions. Out of Space- Apple Battery Info. Battery